C O L U M N S

CHILDREN who grow up with parents who take a ‘tough love’ approach to their upbringing are better prepared to do well in life.
Experiencing a combination of warmth and discipline means children are more likely to develop skills such as application, self-regulation and empathy than those with disengaged or authoritarian parents. Those characteristics boosted children’s life chances, social mobility and opportunity and were profoundly shaped in pre-school years.
Jen Lexmond, principal author of the report, said: ‘Far from a “soft” skill, character is integral to our future success and well-being. ‘The foundations for our character are laid before the age of five. ‘This puts a huge emphasis on parenting, but whatever the parental background, it is confidence, warmth and consistent discipline that matter most.’
According to the study, by think tank Demos, children with ‘tough love’ parents were twice as likely to develop good character traits by the age of five than children with disengaged parents.
The Building Character report, which analysed data from more than 9,000 households in the UK from the Millennium Cohort Study, also found that family structure and income affected children’s development. Children from the richest backgrounds were more than twice as likely to develop crucial characteristics than the poorest. Children with married parents were twice as likely to show the traits than children from single parent or step-parented families.
However, when parental style and confidence were factored in, the difference between children from richer and poorer families disappeared, indicating parenting was the most important influence.
The gap between children from married and single parent families also disappeared when the quality of parenting was taken into consideration.